America's letters to Jackie Kennedy after JFK's death published for first time

Monday 8 March 2010 15:18 BST

Letters of condolence sent to President John F Kennedy's widow are to be published for the first time.

The family sent up to 200,000 notes that Jaqueline Kennedy received after her husbands assassination in 1963 to the John F Kennedy library in Boston.

Of the huge archive, two hundred will be included in a book by historian Ellen Fitzpatrick called Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving Nation.

One of the letter writers was an 11-year-old girl called Jane Dryden, who wrote to Mrs Kennedy every week for six months.

Another, 15-year-old Barbara Rimer, wrote: "I promise you that I will give body and soul to perpetuate the very ideals President Kennedy lived for."

New York housewife Marilyn Davenport, 33, included her phone number in case Mrs Kennedy "ever wanted to talk".

Ms Fitzpatrick, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, said: "It was like the roof came off the building, the walls dropped away, the floor came out from under me. I was absolutely floored by what I'd begun to read.

"There have been so many books about the Kennedy assassination. We've heard from the experts, we've heard from the conspiracy theorists, we've heard from people in the Kennedy administration, but here are the voices of those voiceless, everyday Americans."